Special PLACES

So often, our memories are embedded in a place that hold us for reasons invisible to others. The magic and sometimes the beauty of these places are eternally linked to our own sense of who we are. To re-visit these locations is to re-live a time from our past that is dear to us. It's a form of time travel done all inside our minds.

Redfish await at dawn. Lower Laguna Madre, Texas Behind Scott abd Kathy Sparrow's home on the Arroyo Colorado. The boat is a New Water Boatworks Curlew and there is no finer extreme shallow water boat in the world.

Mission San Jose, San Antonio, Texas
There are times when discretion is the better part of valor. The Franciscans planned on building missions a day's travel apart when Texas was the New World. They knew nothing of the Karankawa Indians who foraged the region and delighted in the "long pig", or cannibalism. San Antonio has five of their missions, built not a day's travel apart, but an hour's travel apart.

Clearest water in the world is in the Bahamas. This is 35 feet deep. Photo was taken at Cape Santa Maria on the north end of Long Island, Bahamas. This is the point where Columbus first touched the New World. Five other locations make the same claim.

FIRST LIGHT--My closest friend, Tim Towne and his wife, Perla, live in Monument , Colorado, a suburb of Colorado Springs. Tim is a retired Air Force officer and Perla is a valued employee of Lockheed-Martin. This view is off their back deck. The thermometer says 16 degrees. On mornings when there has been a fresh snowfall, Tim likes to get up early and look at the over-night footprints of the rabbits, foxes and coyotes in his Kings Deer subdivision and imagine the drama connected to those tracks in the fresh snow. He tells me that sometimes a tiny kit fox is on his deck, looking in to see if there can be a treat to beg.

Somewhere between Colorado Springs and Denver, in a hidden little valley is a collection of buildings that have a story to tell. This barn, well over 100 years old, documents a timeline of struggle against the elements. Perhaps it did not start as a barn, but as a home instead. The chinked cross beams that were the first element built in the barn are clearly evident. At some point, when the structure was converted and enlarged to the barn it is today, they painted it the tradidional red color, but it didn't last. Who lived here and what was their story?